Wholly German Empire!

Niall Fergusson (dobro bran zadnje čase, ker se ukvarja s pojasnjevanjem vzpona in zatona Zahoda) je napisal dober članek o prihodnji Evropi. Povzemam. Komentarje vzemite s ščepcem soli:

Welcome to Europe, 2021... The euro is still circulating, though banknotes are now seldom seen. (Indeed, the ease of electronic payments now makes some people wonder why creating a single European currency ever seemed worth the effort.) But Brussels has been abandoned as Europe's political headquarters. Vienna has been a great success.

Od širitve EU na vzhod se mi Dunaj zdi boljša prestolnica EU. Adria bi sicer nekaj trpela (takrat je itak ne bo več), ampak lahko bi hodili celo z avtom!

"There is something about the Habsburg legacy," explains the dynamic new Austrian Chancellor Marsha Radetzky. "It just seems to make multinational politics so much more fun."

Mož ima smisel za imena :) Tudi tule:

The Germans also like the new arrangements. "For some reason, we never felt very welcome in Belgium," recalls German Chancellor Reinhold Siegfried von Gotha-Dämmerung.

It was fitting that the disintegration of the EU should be centered on the two great cradles of Western civilization, Athens and Rome. But George Papandreou and Silvio Berlusconi were by no means the first European leaders to fall victim to what might be called the curse of the euro.

V zvezi s tem. Tehnokratov vsaj v Italiji niso postavili evrokrati. Postavili so jih trgi!

Euro: Government killing machine

Since financial fear had started to spread through the euro zone in June 2010, no fewer than seven other governments had fallen: in the Netherlands, Slovakia, Belgium, Ireland, Finland, Portugal and Slovenia. The fact that nine governments fell in less than 18 months—with another soon to follow—was in itself remarkable.

No, pa smo doživeli omembo Slovenije! Med tem na severu:

Another thing no one had anticipated in 2011 was developments in Scandinavia. Inspired by the True Finns in Helsinki, the Swedes and Danes—who had never joined the euro—refused to accept the German proposal for a "transfer union" to bail out Southern Europe. When the energy-rich Norwegians suggested a five-country Norse League, bringing in Iceland, too, the proposal struck a chord.

Malo me čudi, da jim ni priključil Baltov.

Tole je vsekakor zmagovalni citat:

As Mr. Draghi said in an interview in December 2011, "The euro could only be saved by printing it."

Sledijo problemi na Bližnjem vzhodu, ki jih razreši ...

Mr. von Habsburg—still known to close associates by his royal title of Archduke Karl of Austria—could justly feel proud. Not only had the euro survived. Somehow, just a century after his grandfather's deposition, the Habsburg Empire had reconstituted itself as the United States of Europe. 

Small wonder the British and the Scandinavians preferred to call it the Wholly German Empire.